Bah, humbug: A quarter of businesses are ditching plans for a Christmas party this year

Having previously worked at Property Week and Management Today, my areas of expertise are housing, entrepreneurs and leadership, as well as cars and the automotive industry. In 2015 I won the British Media Awards' Rising Star of the Year award.

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Emma Haslett

Inappropriate behaviour? Never (Source: Getty)

It seems the corporate world is suffering from a lack of festive cheer this year, after new research showed a quarter of businesses are planning on ditching their Christmas party.

The survey, by the Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM), found 25 per cent of organisations won't throw a party.

That sort of behaviour was rife during the depths of the financial crisis, but it turns out money worries are still a problem.

More than half of employees who are attending a festive shindig are expected to pay towards it this year, the survey found, with an average contribution of £23, while businesses said they were expecting to pay £35 per head.

But perhaps businesses are being put off by employees' drunken shenanigans. Two-thirds said colleagues had drunk too much at previous festive events, with 30 per cent saying they had a hangover the next day (the latter does tend to follow the former).

Some 80 per cent said they'd witnessed "inappropriate behaviour", with 35 per cent saying they'd seen colleagues locked in an embrace, while 30 per cent said there had been "shouting and aggression" and 28 per cent said there had been "rudeness".

Still - Kate Cooper, head of research and policy at ILM, said most people look forward to the Christmas party, " both as an opportunity to develop relationships with people across an organisation and to celebrate and look back on the past year".

"Christmas parties are an important and eagerly anticipated reward for staff and an opportunity for employers to show how much you value them, so they are worth investing in," she added. If you can face another round of Secret Santa, that is...